Fielke flowers

'Fanciful Flowers' baby quilt
completed December 2012

My quilt friends have been raving for years about the Material Obsession books, specifically the work of co-author Sarah Fielke.

Sarah showing off samples from "Quilting From Little Things"
via Fat Quarterly

Laurie loved Sarah's Dotty for Dresden quilt so much, she made a beautifully faithful version that fills my heart with joy.  And red is my least-favorite color!   I mean, seriously:

Laurie's beautiful "Dotty for Dresden"
via Dresden Lane

And my friend Lia made this amazing eagle quilt, modeled on another Material Obsession quilt. Here it is on display at our Lowell Quilt Festival show this past August:

Lia's eagles

We were at Quilt Market last year, when Sarah had just released Quilting From Little Things, and were able to stand in line for autographed copies.  I didn't know her, but was just happy to get a nice book.

via Sarah Fielke

Cut to the next day, when I read the whole thing cover to cover on the plane home, and fell in quilt love.   (No joke:  some random middle aged dude leaned across the aisle mid-flight, gestured to the book, and said:  "Those blankets are really nice looking!")

Sarah Fielke quilt via blickfangquilts and knits

I have since plowed through all her other books, and am now moderately obsessed with Sarah's exuberant, more-is-more use of pattern.  She has a way of mixing a million discordant prints, and still winding up with a harmonious and calm finished product.

'Fanciful Flowers' quilt, from Material Obsession

When one of my work friends announced his wife's pregnancy,  I took this as an invitation to go Full Fielke.  I was quickly up to my elbows in my stash and scrap bin,  pulling hoarded pink Amy Butler prints, repro fat quarters, and every Flea Market fancy scrap I could lay hands on.

The baby quilt I made is based on the Fanciful Flowers quilt, from Material Obsession.

I only made a few changes from the pattern in the book.   I changed the layout from a 3x4 arrangement to a 3x3 arrangement, and left the seed pods off the blooms.

My corner repeats were done in soft greens instead of oranges.

I'd originally purchased a cream-on-pink dot to back the floral applique blocks, but didn't have enough to support the 18" x 18" scale of the blocks.  I grabbed a very pale peach Lizzy House pearl bracelet print at our Gather Here sew-in, and turned out to be even happier with it than the original selection.

The quilt was backed with another Amy Butler that I've always loved.  I quilted this on the long arm at my friend's Linda's house, using a big loopy daisy concept.   Linda lent her steady arms to helping me highlight the shape of flower buds, so they'd show on the back.

I LOVED making this and was really sad to see it go.  This is the first gift quilt I've ever really considered re-making, so that I can have one of my own.   Don't be surprised if you see this again.  Even if I don't re-make this one,  I suspect this is not the last of my Fielke quilts...

Converging corners

So, this one was finished a while ago, but I'd failed to post details.

Obviously, I got the idea for this from the Film in the Fridge Converging Corners quilt.  I just loved everything about that quilt, and thought it would be a great way to use scraps to make a vibrant baby quilt for a woman I work with. 

The baby's gender was unknown so I did my best to remain true to the primary colors used in the inspiration.     This was a bit of a stretch from me, as I hardly ever use red.  I love how the red perks up this quilt - I think I may be sprinkling more of this around, going forward.    It's a real personal growth moment for me!  ;)

There's a lot of Denyse Schmidt fabric in here, including on the binding.  I also used a lot of my repro scraps, many of which are very geometric (ie, less flower power) when you look closely.

This came together very quickly.  I backed it with strip of patchworked leftovers from the front, run alongside an awesome yellow-on-green dot I got at Marden's for $3/yard.   This dot was I previously used to back Lela's baby quilt.  In hindsight, I should have gotten more of this yardage.

Things have been crazy here, preparing for our Boston Modern Quilt Guild exhibit at the Lowell Quilt Festival in mid-August.    Lots of sleeves are being sewn, more to come on this soon...

WIP?

Actually, not a WIP at all.  It's done and has been for 2 weeks, but unfortunately work ("real" work, at my job) has been so bad I've not had time to post.   So here's a teaser for some work I did a few weeks ago, for a gal at (you guessed it) work, who's about to deliver a baby.

I promise to do a real post on this one sometime soon, once work slows down.   Or I go bananas in a meeting and quit.

For Lela

2012 may go down as The Year of the Baby Quilt.    This one's for Lela, a friend from work.

quilt is even nicer when juxtaposed
against forsythia and adorable husband.

This quilt was inspired by a beautiful one that I found on Helen's flickr page.    It's my 3rd baby quilt of the year.   (2011 boasted zero baby quilts, by contrast.)

I pieced this top during The Boston Modern Quilt Guild retreat in Kennebunkport, Maine, in March.   It was the perfect smallish piecing project to have with me for the weekend, especially since laying it out took a while and it was handy to have other eyeballs around to opine on the arrangement!

I think the other ladies didn't totally know what I was up to with all the squares, at first.

It took for freaking ever to get this far,
and still it looked like nothing!!

Thankfully there were walls and walls of felt, because it took me forever to get the placement finalized, which had to be done prior to sewing anything.  There was lots of backing up and walking forward.   Also, squinting, rearranging, and rearranging back.   I kept moving to label something, only to have my self-generated air gusts blast an entire row off the wall.  Doh!  But slowly, it took shape:

see?  something begins to emerge.

Helen's original quilt also has a fade-out effect, which was what I loved most.

I wanted to replicate the idea in more overtly "boy" tones, since my friend Lela is expecting a little dude.   Aside from the backing, everything here was from stash.  The field is a blue chambray fabric (Carolina?).   The colors include some Joel Dewberry acorns and yellow woodgrain, a few konas (ash and medium gray), a few of the muted Denyse Schmidt greens and blues from her Joann's line, and a Momo blue-on-white dot from It's a Hoot.  Plus just some random stuff from the scrap heap.

The quilt is bound with a white on grey dot fabric (also Momo) and backed in a yellow-on-green dot fabric I found at Marden's in Sanford, Maine, on the way home from retreat.  It was something like $2.99/yard and is ultra-soft when washed.

I did a semi-directional, meandering, semi-square stipple and left the triangles unquilted.

Overall, I really like this quilt.   I was sad to see it go, but am excited to see the little man on it - Lela's due any minute!

A new baby (...quilt) for Laurie!

Our guild president, Laurie, is expecting a baby any minute.  (seriously!  any minute!  today!)

Two months ago, the ladies of the BMQG decided we'd hijack the first part of our February meeting to flash-shower her, as that would be her last guild meeting, pre-maternity leave.   After a bit of back and forth, we decided on a non-quilt, gender neutral, "baby gift" theme.

Of course, by this time I was already about 75% done with a quilt!  (cue the wah-wah music!)  So I bucked the theme and landed here:

Laurie's bear quilt, February 2012

This was inspired primarily by 2 things:

1)  Thomas Knauer's "Growth Chart" quilt, which I received a free pattern for at one of his Quilt Market presentations.  I loved the shape of the block, and the ambitious negative space.

2) a Japanese bear-print fabric I saw somewhere online, and can no longer locate.    The bear had such a sweet face!

I'm sure there are more scientific methods, but ultimately I just Xeroxed the bear image several times to enlarge it by about 400%.   Then, I outlined the image with a Sharpie to highlight the 3 main components (head, nose, body), which were then traced onto template plastic.

I used the templates to cut body parts from my beloved Momo malt dots fabric and some Kona (khaki?  tan?).   Everything was then appliqued to the Essex flax linen I used for the field.   I also used some blue perle cotton to do a simple stitch outline, and filled in the bear's facial and toe detail with embroidery floss chain stitching.

bear applique

I more or less stuck to the Growth Chart formula for the blocks, using green blocks to indicate the ground, a blue to indicate the sky, and a few improv blocks in yellows and whites to stand in for the sun and clouds.

I wanted the quilting to be deliberate, since so much of the quilt is empty space.   I broke the quilting into three sections, and used a different thread color and free motion technique in each:  vertical linear quilting in green for the "grassy" mounded area at the bottom, blue squared stipple for the sky, and a loop/pebble hybrid of silvery white for the clouds.  The colored fabrics were left unquilted for contrast.

this was my favorite!
 I loved how the silvery pebbling looked after it was washed.

For the back, I went with Denyse Schmidt's blue and green dot fabric, from Joann's.  I bound the quilt in Joel Dewberry yellow wood-grain.  I knew Laurie would appreciate this, as she is aware I hoard wood-grain like a jealous lover.

Good luck Laurie!!!

ps - for a full rundown of all the baby swag Laurie received, see her blog post! 

First blog post, first 2012 finish

I'm on a strict fabric diet leading up to the March 16 BMQG retreat, which will feature a fabric shop hop en route to Maine.

I'm in the midst of several large scrap-centric quilts, but here's my first finish of the year:  a baby quilt for a friend from work who's having a little girl in early April.   I used Monet's awesome tutorial for the blocks, and quilted in a V-formation, to mimic the 8 wedges in the center "web".   Will post the back once I can get the sunlight (and a helper) to cooperate for longer than 4 minutes. :)

Denise's spiderweb quilt, finished January 28, 2012